Shock-tuning master, Phil Licciardi joins us on Episode 259

What do you get when you cross a tennis playing, stunt bike rider with a Rock Zombie? Answer: Phil Licciardi, shock-tuning master. Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

3:33 – they had the Green Police, I got pulled over for pushing my bike to town, they tried to hold my dad off at gunpoint, and he wasn’t even mad yet!

9:41 – the film, The Firm was based on a guy who owned the company my dad worked for, the controlling aspects of this guy were crazy             

17:48 – I definitely got a PhD in partying! 

21:48 – “How did you learn to fab?” Just did it, I went and got a Home Depot weld pack 100 Fluxcore machine and just started doing crappy work.

32:44 – the thing about sport bike stunt riding is you either get good pretty quick or you die trying. 

49:23 –I left KOH saying, there is no way in hell I’m ever getting involved in that situation. Two months later, Doug called, “hey, so you want to build an Ultra4 car?”

Special thanks to 4low Magazine and Maxxis Tires for support and sponsorship of this podcast.

Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

Transcript

[00:00:05.310] - 

Welcome to Conversations with Big Rich. This is an interview-style podcast. Those interviewed are all involved in the off-road industry. Being involved, like all of my guests are, is a lifestyle, not just a job. I talk to past, present, and future legends, as well as business owners, employees, media, and land use warriors, men and women who have found their way into this exciting and addictive lifestyle we call off-road. We discuss their personal history, struggles, successes, and reboots. We dive into what drives them to stay active and off-road. We all hope to shed some light on how to find a path into this world that we live and love and call off-road.

[00:00:46.560] - 

Whether you're crawling the Red Rocks of Moab or hauling your toys to the trail, Maxxis has the tires you can trust for performance and durability. Four wheels or two, Maxxis tires are the choice of champions because they know that whether for work or play, for fun or competition, Maxxis tires deliver. Choose Maxxis. Tread victoriously.

[00:01:13.030] - 

Have you seen 4Low magazine yet? 4low magazine is a high-quality, well-written, four-wheel drive-focused magazine for the enthusiast market. If you still love the idea of a printed magazine, something to save and read at any time, 4LOW is the magazine for you. 4LOW cannot be found in stores, but you can have it delivered to your home or place of business. Visit 4Low magazine.com to order your subscription today.

[00:01:39.870] - Big Rich Klein

This week's guest on Conversations with Big Rich is Phil Licciardi, shock builder and tuner, FAB guy, rock zombie 4x4 club member, ex-sport bike stunt driver, dirt bike rider, and all things America. All right, Phil Licciardi. It's going to be Good to have you on the podcast here and learn more about you. I first met you quite a while ago when I was hanging out with Bob Roggy and starting Cal Rocks, and you were out and about. So good to have you on here.

[00:02:16.220] - Phil Licciardi

Thanks. Glad to be here.

[00:02:17.690] - Big Rich Klein

So let's jump right in and find out where you were born and raised.

[00:02:24.170] - Phil Licciardi

I was born and raised partially in Plainville, Massachusetts. It's the northeastern on the tip of Rhode Island, pretty much, just over the border. I was there for 14 years. Yeah, 14 years. I think we left in '95 or '96. '95.

[00:02:44.270] - Big Rich Klein

That's about right. '95, '96, and you were in northeast, well, in Mass, but in close to Rhode Island, huh?

[00:02:53.390] - Phil Licciardi

Yep.

[00:02:54.450] - Big Rich Klein

See here, I thought you were a Cali boy the whole time.

[00:02:57.080] - Phil Licciardi

No, no, it sure wasn't. I had accent and everything. I did two years in Memphis as well. Right after Mass, I was in Memphis for those two years. Then I was out in California for, I guess it came out in '96 or '97 to California. I was there for longer than I was in Massachusetts. I guess it makes me that.

[00:03:27.230] - Big Rich Klein

Tell me what it was like growing up in that part of the Northeast?

[00:03:33.510] - Phil Licciardi

It was a different world there back then. The town I was in was a really cool dirt bike community. We had a New England Trail Riding Association, raced through our property. There was trails everywhere. I could ride my dirt bike to school. There was off-road opportunities everywhere. From what my friends who still live there say, it's all built up. It's all city now, and there's barely any trails or anything to go recreate on the commies have taken over. They were taken over back then. They had the green police the first time I ever heard of anything like that. So obviously everyone in California knows what a green sticker registration is for your dirt bike. Well, I believe Massachusetts started that first. I got pulled. I just got a brand new dirt bike from North County, Yamaha, got shipped out, put my front wheel on, put the fender on, put the bars on. And then I was pushing it to town. I was just going to Coast into town and get oil and gas and start breaking it in. I got pulled over like that. They tried to impound the bike.

[00:04:39.200] - Big Rich Klein

For pushing it down the road?

[00:04:41.330] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah. I'm like, This bike has never been fired. It's brand new. I'm going to town. I'm rolling down. It's basically downhill all the way to town a few miles. I didn't think much of it. Obviously, couldn't run because the bike didn't run yet. It didn't have any gas in it. They came and they I don't know. It was a man and a woman, the Green Police, they called them. They had a XL 200 dirt bike, nothing that was going to catch anything if my bike was running. Then they were towing it behind some makeshift police car at the time. Pull me over, I stop. Obviously, can't do anything about it. They read me the riot act, and I'm just a kid. They call a tow truck, big flat bed comes and loads the bike up. My dad's going home, and he drives by. He's like, shoot, that's my son. And he stops. Well, the female cop pulls a gun on him and is trying to hold him back at gunpoint, and he wasn't even mad yet. Well, then he got mad. So they weren't going to get away with that in his mind. Then they had me They were writing me a ticket for being underage and not having registration, all this different bullshit.

[00:05:52.300] - Phil Licciardi

And while they were doing that, my dad went and talked to the tow truck driver, and he gave him $40. He's like, Just bring the bike back to my house. He's like, Yeah, screw those folks anyways. They brought the bike back to the house. It didn't go to impound. I ended up having to go to Boston to deal with some bullshit with that. Then, yeah, I never let that happen twice, and I ran from them. Me and my friends ran from them for years after that. It was pretty funny. Yeah, freaking haters.

[00:06:20.230] - Big Rich Klein

In my mind, I was like, Okay, how long into the interview will it be to hear the first commie reference. You didn't disappoint. It was like four minutes, maybe three.

[00:06:38.760] - Phil Licciardi

It was accurate. Yes. They're terrible people. I don't know why people have to be like that, but I guess somebody's Got to do it.

[00:06:45.790] - Big Rich Klein

Right. Then all they do is create those run situations later.

[00:06:50.740] - Phil Licciardi

Oh, yeah. They didn't like that at all, but we really enjoyed running from them. We'd go one way, then we'd blow by them the other way on the trail next to it, then come back past them again. Just have Just a big fat boy on an XL 200. What are you going to do, man? I'm not going to do anything. So it was pretty fun.

[00:07:06.940] - Big Rich Klein

So then moving to Tennessee, was that parents chasing a job, or what was that about?

[00:07:17.290] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah, my dad's company got bought out, and I guess he would have been a CEO or VP or something of it. And it got bought out by Dow Corning. They paid him for two years a very handsome salary to not work for a competitor. And instead of moving in a different direction with work or something like that, he just took those two years to I don't know. He really improved our property and built another garage on the property and all kinds of fun stuff. And then those two years were up and he's like, oh, I need to be the producer here again. So instead My mom was a tenured math teacher in math. Our house was paid off. They were really on their game back then. I don't know, my dad just decided he needed to be the, we want to call it the provider. He uprooted us, and off we went. Tennessee was not ideal at the time. I can appreciate it a whole lot more now, but I didn't like it that much back then.

[00:08:25.340] - Big Rich Klein

Especially Memphis.

[00:08:27.180] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah, I was outside of Memphis and German And I guess if I was going to make the connection for you, I'd say Germantown would have been like the Granite Bay. Granite Bay is to Sacramento what Germantown was to Memphis, if that makes sense.

[00:08:45.120] - Big Rich Klein

You weren't closer to downtown?

[00:08:49.740] - Phil Licciardi

No. We did have a lot of fun going downtown and messing around and whatnot. And I went back some years ago and saw a couple of my buddies, and we went out on the town and still had a good time. No one got stabbed. I mean, it was probably close, but we were too drunk to notice.

[00:09:05.630] - Big Rich Klein

Right. That's a good way to spend Memphis.

[00:09:09.320] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah, absolutely.

[00:09:11.820] - Big Rich Klein

My only experience in Memphis was there for four days for the Beale Street Music Festival along the river. Yeah, sure. That was pretty good.

[00:09:24.860] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah. I mean, man, the food and a lot of the people are awesome, and the crime is just out of control now. But it wasn't bad. It wasn't bad when I was there. I mean, that was a lifetime ago, though.

[00:09:35.340] - Big Rich Klein

Right. Then you end up in Sacramento. How did that happen?

[00:09:41.140] - Phil Licciardi

The business deal my dad had going on, and he ended up being a CEO of a company called Guardsmark. If you look into the company Guardsmark, the owner, I don't know, hopefully he's dead by now, but he was a His name was Ira Lipman, if anybody listening feels like looking that up. And the movie The Firm was based on that guy. The premise was changed. This time, apparently, it was a former disgruntled employee that decided to leave that company. And he went on to write that screenplay about this psychopath owner boss guy. And it turns out that that was that guy's deal. We couldn't afford the house he wanted us to live in, so he ended up picking up the slack on whatever that cost was. He didn't want my sister and I going to public school there, so he paid the difference for us to go to... I went to an all boys school She went to an all girls school for the first year. That was absolutely miserable. But just the controlling aspects of this guy and the things that he wanted to do. There was cameras in the house we didn't know about.

[00:10:56.690] - Phil Licciardi

The phone was probably bug, tapped, this, that, and the other.

[00:10:59.020] - Big Rich Klein

Wow.

[00:11:00.030] - Phil Licciardi

After year two, we made a hasty exit. Some people that my dad had been in business with back in Massachusetts were out in the Sacramento area now, and they formed up a little operation out there where they were selling medical supplies, like what his original business was back east. That didn't go very well for them, but it created a great opportunity for me. As much crap as I talked about California politics, I absolutely loved living there at the time and had a ball. It was a great place to grow up in my more formative years, if you will. Right.

[00:11:40.910] - Big Rich Klein

California is a great place if you can get past the politics.

[00:11:45.990] - Phil Licciardi

Absolutely.

[00:11:47.890] - Big Rich Klein

When I was a kid, I surfed, snow-skied, and water-skied all in one day.

[00:11:55.590] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah, that's amazing.

[00:11:56.580] - Big Rich Klein

You can't do that in most places.

[00:11:59.500] - Phil Licciardi

No. No, you can't. It's a haul. I'll try to get that done.

[00:12:04.590] - Big Rich Klein

You end up in California. You're out of school by then, or did you finish high school here in California?

[00:12:14.250] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah, I had 11th and 12th grade in California. I got to be basically a senior twice because Granite Bay High School was brand new. Basically, the people that were there from the beginning, they had a ninth and a 10th grade the first year, and then the second year, I was there, so they had a ninth, 10th, and 11th grade. So we were the senior class, more or less, two years in a row, which was really cool. And coming off of as much as that all boys school sucked in Tennessee, anything below a 70 was a failing grade, but they didn't send off the Fs to any of the other schools on the transcript. They just put the number score on there. So even though I purposely failed out of that place, a lot of my stuff transferred as Cs and Ds to the public school. And then so I got credits for all that. And then it seemed like school was so far ahead of California at the time that I had so many extra credits. A lot of my 11th and 12th grade was just gym and outside work program, stuff like that. So I barely had two classes a semester.

[00:13:25.940] - Phil Licciardi

So I'd just be there for a second class, lunch, and then another go to my other class and go home. It's a pretty sweet deal.

[00:13:32.080] - Big Rich Klein

Nice. I spent my high school career getting my English credits in yearbook.

[00:13:40.340] - Phil Licciardi

In Yearbook?

[00:13:41.120] - Big Rich Klein

In Yearbook, yeah. On your book staff as the photographer. I didn't even have to do any writing.

[00:13:46.200] - Phil Licciardi

That's badass.

[00:13:47.410] - Big Rich Klein

I had to do some captions for photos, but I would make suggestions, and then the editors would actually go through and change all that.

[00:13:57.310] - Phil Licciardi

Oh, man, that's funny.

[00:13:59.590] - Big Rich Klein

That's It's a cool deal. Yeah, it worked. Then did you play any sports through school or as a kid?

[00:14:10.350] - Phil Licciardi

My parents forced me to play tennis back in the day, and I was really good. I did that so I could go ride and race dirt bikes, mountain bikes, whatever. They made me play that before. When I was younger, I played baseball and soccer, and I I enjoyed soccer. I never played football. I never played basketball. I was always a little guy. And then, yeah, so just tennis in... Jeez, did I? No, I didn't even have to play in high school. That was just a middle school thing. As soon as they picked me up, moved me to Tennessee against my will, they didn't make me do anything. I just raced mountain bikes and lived my life.

[00:14:54.490] - Big Rich Klein

You went to an all boys school.

[00:14:56.580] - Phil Licciardi

Well, yeah, that was for one year. And then I did a public school the next year and had a freaking blast.

[00:15:03.090] - Big Rich Klein

So I'm envisioning you in white shorts, short shorts, white socks and white tennis shoes. And what color shirt would finish off that ensemble?

[00:15:21.390] - Phil Licciardi

While playing tennis? Yeah. I don't know. Everything was probably brown because I was still dirty as hell and always working on stuff. I never I never did well in white, so I doubt.

[00:15:31.750] - Big Rich Klein

I just want all your friends to think back you in white short shorts and white socks. That's all.

[00:15:39.930] - Phil Licciardi

I get a kick out of that. People are like, You did what? I'm like, Hey, it was not by choice. But man, beating up on those kids that wanted to play tennis. Think about Happy Gilmore. He's like, I'm a hockey player, not a golfer. Kind of the same program for me in my mind. But it was fun beating them up, not physically, but just sending them home losing.

[00:16:00.030] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:16:00.300] - Phil Licciardi

What are you going to do? Right.

[00:16:02.840] - Big Rich Klein

So you get to Granite Bay, you're finishing up school, but not a lot of classes. Were shop classes still a thing then?

[00:16:12.430] - Phil Licciardi

They had a really cool shop there, but it was not... Either they never opened it or it wasn't open yet or whatever. They might have a little wood shop, but they did have what could have been an automotive shop from what I recall, but it was not an option because I would have loved to have a real shop class. I would have learned so much more, so much faster instead of just figuring out on my own.

[00:16:38.980] - Big Rich Klein

Right. So you were still riding motorcycles and stuff?

[00:16:43.080] - Phil Licciardi

Not really. I had a dirt bike, obviously left Massachusetts with a dirt bike, brought it to Tennessee. Tiny little riding areas I had access to. Like Massachusetts, I could ride out of the house. In Tennessee, we were very suburbby, so I couldn't really get out and do anything. My parents never had a pickup truck or a trailer or anything like that. I didn't have any friends that were really riding down there, so we couldn't really load up and go anywhere. That sucked. I ended up selling that and just all mountain bikes until, I guess, until college. As soon as I was in college, I had my own shop already in Chico. I guess I fast forwarded, but I had my own shop Chico and was making my own money, paying for school, whatever. I was like, Well, this is stupid. I'm going to buy a dirt bike now. Got back on the dirt bike program, and that's when that started again.

[00:17:40.640] - Big Rich Klein

So you went to Chico for college?

[00:17:43.710] - Phil Licciardi

I did, yeah. I didn't finish, though, like most people.

[00:17:46.890] - Big Rich Klein

Party state.

[00:17:48.330] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah. Yeah, it was a good time. I definitely got a PhD in partying.

[00:17:53.010] - Big Rich Klein

What was your focus besides partying? Did you have a A major that you were looking at?

[00:18:02.990] - Phil Licciardi

This gets weird again, not unlike how weird tennis was. Started off with business because that's standard. I actually learned a few things, which was cool. Then I didn't enjoy the classes anymore. I wasn't having any fun with that. I was quite the English student since I failed three times in a row in that all boys school. Once during the Main semester, or once during the school year and then twice over summer, the guy failed me. After that, I never got less than 100% on anything English through the rest of my whole school career, I guess you can say. I switched to an English major. I don't know if I even formally did it. I just started taking those classes. That was fun because I always enjoyed writing papers. I really enjoyed getting paid to write papers for other people. I do that. Then I ended up switching to philosophy because I really liked a few of the classes I took at the beginning. You're always writing papers. It's always interesting. Then this is where my school career ended. I think I was 12 or 13 units from graduating. Then all of a sudden, the philosophy class switched from interesting stuff to how all the philosophers had little boys.

[00:19:29.690] - Phil Licciardi

I decided this wasn't for me. I left my books on the table and just middle fingers and walked out of there. So never to return to school again.

[00:19:38.930] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. You'd mentioned that you were working, you had your own shop and stuff at that point. Tell us how you led into that. What did you major... What things did you do in your shopping?

[00:19:55.600] - Phil Licciardi

Same stuff I did forever. But here's a cool to start with. Obviously, Rock zombies started... I think we started it formally in 2000 and then called it a club in 2001. That was always our origination date. I had a little shop back in the house, at my parents' house, Then we were doing all kinds of wheeling this out and the other. Then I fell in love with Chico, and I had to move there. Went there and I still had all my fab tools and whatnot. Everybody knows the name Mike Ladd from Benton Twisted. Oh, yeah. Second Second place in Top Truck Challenge 1999. Freaking superhero, rock star of a human, just awesome guy in general. That's how that started. He invited me up for, you probably remember, the Dimitri and Serge, the Vodka Brothers. I guess it would have been Serge's bachelor party up at the Bambi Inn. Mike invited me to that. I came up and had a riot with them. And I didn't move to Chico yet. But then when the time came to move to Chico, Mike's like, Hey, man, I got this shop over here. You can store all your stuff in here for now and use my shop when you need to.

[00:21:11.150] - Phil Licciardi

And then as soon as this other unit over here opens up, I was going to pick that up If you wanted to rent that for me, you can do that. And I was like, Really? So I didn't even have to be an adult yet. I didn't have to figure out rental agreements or this, that, and the other. I just had to pay Mike the $250 a month or whatever the pittance was for that building. It was amazing. I was just building Jeeps and Toyotas and Cajun stuff and doing a lot of hack job work back then. But some of the stuff is still on the trail now.

[00:21:42.690] - Big Rich Klein

How did you learn to FAB if you didn't have shop classes or anything?

[00:21:48.510] - Phil Licciardi

Just did it. It all started with a Home Depot Weld pack 100 Fluxxore machine, and it was what I could afford. I went and I got it, and I just started doing really crappy work. I even did. As far as I know, I had the second running, driving 50YJ on the planet back then. I did that whole motor swap myself. I welded all my brackets in, did everything with a weld pack 100. I think those motor amounts are still on that Jeep right now and still attached to it. That was the same motor that's still on that Jeep. It hasn't come out yet.

[00:22:29.440] - Big Rich Klein

Were they good welds or just a lot?

[00:22:32.650] - Phil Licciardi

No comment. There's definitely one big center bolt backing it up because I didn't trust the welding, but they were there. It was a pretty bad deal. But yeah, Other than the wiring, I got everything done on that motor swap. I think it took three or four weeks, which felt like a lifetime. I just wanted that thing done so bad. Then I found this dude down in Sack who knew how to wire those. He drove down and he's like, Why don't you run up to Carl's Jr. And get me a burger or something like that? I was like, All right. I've been trying to wire this thing for a whole week, and I don't know how to do wires. Still don't. I ran down to Carl's Jr. I come back and the Jeep's running in the garage. I was like, You, son of a bitch. He gets 300 bucks, which made me flat broke at that time, but it was worth every penny. Jeep was up and running, and it never missed a beat after that. Then I don't remember where we were with that story.

[00:23:31.040] - Big Rich Klein

Anyway, so the zombies, your first intro was the Bachelor Party?

[00:23:42.030] - Phil Licciardi

Oh, no, we were already... The Rock zombie Club was already there. That was my first time really hanging out with Mike Lad and Drew Hawes. I think that's how you say their last name.

[00:23:52.700] - Big Rich Klein

How did you come across the Rock zombies and get into wheeling?

[00:23:59.950] - Phil Licciardi

Well, so obviously everyone knows Big Rob and Jeremy Dick. I met them. Should I met Big Rob because he worked at Four Wheel Parts and Sack back in the day. Met him there. He had this red CJ7 on 35-inch boggers, and I thought that thing was the coolest thing ever. And it was. I mean, at the time, that thing was just absolutely badass. He had that, and Jeremy Dick had a... I don't remember if it was a forerunner pick up. But he had a Toyota that was all pimped out at the time. We got hooked up. We go wheeling all the time. It was just a freaking riot. And then we just started dragging other people into it. They were President, Vice President, and I was the first member. Then my buddy, Brandon, came in. We just started snatching everybody up, and it was a riot. We did a lot more drinking than we did wheeling, but it was a good time.

[00:25:05.230] - Big Rich Klein

Was the Rubicon, you guys, Home Trail?

[00:25:10.230] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah, we spent most of our time going to Rubicon. It was just easy. I don't know why Four Dice wasn't always on the agenda. I think my first Four Dice trip was with Mike Lad. I lived in Chico at the time, and he had tickets to Sierra Trek. His rig wasn't done, so I just drove him down in in the Jeep, and we smashed through four nights. It's the first time I saw it, and I hadn't fallen in love with that trail yet. I took a few more trips before I really liked it.

[00:25:40.330] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. What was your first experience coming across other clubs on the Rubicon?

[00:25:47.990] - Phil Licciardi

Well, I mean, Pirates, of course. You can't exclude them from it. That's the OGs right there. Whether we were trying to be like them or be some version of that, I mean, everybody ended up being really good friends, in my opinion, and I still have lifelong friends from most clubs. I don't know what other club's names I can even think of to mention right now.

[00:26:16.070] - Big Rich Klein

The one that always comes to my mind is the Outlaws.

[00:26:19.320] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah, Outlaws. A lot of good buddies on that. Oh, let's go way back machine. How about the Rubicon Porn Stars? Rps? They were always hilarious. Keith Hanley Loppie. Loppie, rather. Sorry. He lives out here in Dayton now, near me. Haven't seen him since he moved out here, but just noticed that he's out there. I don't know. I don't remember all the names from that club. Spent just too many years of just hard drinking and forgetting things, meeting people and pushing old memories out.

[00:26:51.340] - Big Rich Klein

Has the club gone like the others? Is it more of an extreme camping club, if that?

[00:27:02.010] - Phil Licciardi

Hard to say. We still get together and burn it down pretty good. We have a few get-downs every year that are a ton of fun. Obviously, Rocktoberfest is the showdown of showdowns most every year. Usually, a lot more wheeling takes place when we do our event at Four Dice, but they've had the Rattlesnake Road closed, so camping at Four Dice Lakes, access to it sucks. And no one wants to go in on the top side to Metal Lake and camp up there, which obviously, I mean, that would be ideal because you could bring a cab over in, you could bring all kinds of stuff and just have that be home base. That doesn't really work out. So This last year, we did Rubicon, and it was still one for the record books. It was a riot. Tons of people showed up. We did some wheeling. We had a rooster there. That was pretty funny.

[00:27:56.060] - Big Rich Klein

Right. I saw that.

[00:27:57.430] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah. So it was Yeah, it's just a good time. We've definitely tapered off in the extreme parts, but we still have folks like Tom Lou that are ready to destroy their stuff if there's a camera out. It's a pretty good time. Pretty good time for sure.

[00:28:16.790] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, I watched Adam Dods do his initiation run, I guess, what it was up there, and you guys had the rooster.

[00:28:27.000] - Phil Licciardi

Oh, yeah. Yeah, he did do that. I I was there for one day, one night. So of course, I was... And I wasn't driving, so I was way worse than normal. It's all blur.

[00:28:42.200] - Big Rich Klein

So let's talk You got your FAB career, and you're working at Mike Lads out in Paradise area, because that was Paradise, right?

[00:28:56.840] - Phil Licciardi

He was in? Chico. Chico? He was in Chico at the time. He wasn't Paradise, Paradise Burned Down. Sucks. So many of my friends lost their stuff, and now he's in Durham. Okay. It's right down the street.

[00:29:08.040] - Big Rich Klein

Okay, but in Chico at the time, and you're going to college and you're doing fab work. Were you just doing everything or anything? What was that?

[00:29:17.680] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah, whatever got in the way. I mean, I was always doing cages, bumpers, suspension, mostly leaf spring stuff back then. Every once in a while, I'd poorly link something, and that was really bad. I never did coilovers. I always had some coil springs of white body shocks or whatever people could afford. I was really the low end of the dollar spectrum as far as FAB goes back then. It ramped up a bit after that, but I've never really considered myself a high-end fabricator, high-end builder.

[00:29:54.250] - Big Rich Klein

What led to to you guys. You got married to Sarah, what, in 2008?

[00:30:05.670] - Phil Licciardi

Yes, sir. Nailed it.

[00:30:07.300] - Big Rich Klein

How did you meet Sarah?

[00:30:10.510] - Phil Licciardi

She stalked me on MySpace, split He did my space, slid in my DMs. I was like, Uh-oh. One of my other good buddies really had a thing for her, and she wasn't into it, sadly for him. I felt bad when we went out for the first couple of times. But it was, I would say, as close to love at first sight as you could ever really have happen, I guess. So we were damn near inseparable from the get, and we've been together ever since.

[00:30:45.500] - Big Rich Klein

Nice. Perfect.

[00:30:47.280] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah.

[00:30:48.420] - Big Rich Klein

At what point did you leave Mike Lad's shop? I would imagine you did that before 2008?

[00:30:59.090] - Phil Licciardi

He actually He just rented me the space next door. It was still my shop the whole time. Every once in a while, I'd have me do something for him, but he had his own staff and everybody that did all kinds of work. They were busy, busy. I was just doing my own thing over there. But he ended up moving to a way bigger shop, partnered up with somebody, and got a way bigger shop on the other side of town. I just kept the lease on that one building, and I stayed there until I moved out of Chico, New Year's Day of 2005. So I was gone. Gone from there, my buddy started sport bike stunt riding. That was a blip in history, too. So when I started doing that in 2003, things escalated pretty good in 2004. And one of my good buddies, the best man at my wedding, Brandon Dodd, he And he sponsored me in such a way that he made my life just super easy. He cut me a check. I could go get a new bike, and I could travel to all these different places. He gave me a room in his house, and then he gave me a shop at one of his warehouses, and it was just the sweetest deal ever.

[00:32:22.240] - Phil Licciardi

So all I had to do was work a little bit to pay some of my bills and then just travel the country and ride and compete and do shows and videos and whatnot. That was pretty much my life for a couple of years.

[00:32:34.920] - Big Rich Klein

How does one get into doing that? How did that all evolve?

[00:32:41.880] - Phil Licciardi

Stunt riding?

[00:32:42.610] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah.

[00:32:44.370] - Phil Licciardi

Well, like anything, you're probably doing it for the chicks. That was how that started. I always rode dirt bikes, whatever. And then I always wanted a sport bike. I mean, who doesn't like the freedom of being able to just throw a backpack and a helmet on and just go. So it started off as innocent enough as just riding. And then you're not going to not try to wheelie it. And then, of course, after a little while, that became... It started to go pretty good for me The thing about the sport bike stunt riding is you either get good pretty quick or you die trying. So I didn't die, luckily. The sport bikes never hurt me. It was always dirt bikes and mini bikes. So just Got into that. And there was a forum called Stunt Life, which was just like pirate at the time, and had the same thing. So you could just hook up with people and post your stuff. If somebody wanted you to come out and do a show or whatever, they'd find you that way, or a word would spread locally. Our club was called Sack Nuts, obviously out of Sacramento.

[00:33:55.610] - Phil Licciardi

And that name stuck like glue. We were just royalty around town. It got known pretty good nationwide. We'd travel. Some of us would hit all the shows and competitions that we could. It got pretty popular, and people would treat us really well whenever we went anywhere. It was pretty cool.

[00:34:18.090] - Big Rich Klein

Did you just get tired of doing it? Or what was the... How did you back out of that?

[00:34:26.830] - Phil Licciardi

Meeting Sarah was a a very important part of that. It's not an industry you can be in and be in a relationship unless you have this insane level of willpower, because there's a lot of women that Just like any industry, when you're doing good at your game, there's a lot of women that'll do pretty much whatever, and they'll be pushy about it, too. They call them pro-hose or whatever, and I made a lot of good friends in that game and met a lot of really cool women. A lot of them are still friends to this day, but it's not a situation where you can really be in a relationship and not have some issues going on as far as that goes, whether it be jealousy or girls causing problems, et cetera. It was just better to just bail out of that. Before I died, too, you're ripping that front break on 120 miles per hour to roll the longest endo you can. People died and got paralyzed all the time doing that. I didn't need to be involved in it any longer. I did my thing. I got a few trophies and made a few bucks, and it was good enough.

[00:35:50.750] - Big Rich Klein

Got to experience the lifestyle.

[00:35:53.100] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah, it was an absolute riot. To say I wasn't tired after three years of that would be a lie because you're just on the road. I'm on the road like three weeks a month, typically. It was tiring.

[00:36:07.430] - Big Rich Klein

You're still doing the FAB at the same time?

[00:36:11.970] - Phil Licciardi

Barely. There would be a job sitting there at the shop or Then I'd come back and do the absolute bare minimum for a week just to make sure everything was going the way it was supposed to be going. Because I was still splitting time with Chico and then on the road at the time. I was never home. I was paying for a shop in a room at a house where I just wasn't even at. It just finally made sense when Dod gave me the opportunity to bail out of that. That was really cool. Then it allowed me to focus way harder for the next couple of years on the stunt riding.

[00:36:46.760] - Big Rich Klein

So then you give up the stunt riding, you met Sarah, you get back into the FAB game, or did you work for somebody else?

[00:36:55.800] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah, I never stopped. Okay. I never stopped. I always had a shop somewhere. So I still had the shop at Brandon's, but now I was just paying a little bit of rent because I wasn't riding anymore. No one was, but I mean, more or less shut the club down in '07. And so I was just back to FAB pretty much full-time. And every once in a while, I get a pretty cool gig. My buddy Tim got me hooked up with Can-Am, and Ford, and Toyota. I don't know what else I did, but Basically, since I was a professional stunt rider, I had the credentials to be a professional driver. So these marketing agencies would hire us to go and do ride and drives, more or less. So what it started as was Can-Am in '07 was releasing their line of quads again. The name Can-Am came back again. I don't know if you remember all that. So they were releasing their quads again, and they wanted people at all these different events to go out and build a course and then do ride and drives and lead and follows and all that stuff with these new quads.

[00:38:07.630] - Phil Licciardi

And my buddy Tim, that was his program. So he dragged me in on that. And honestly, that's some of the most fun I've ever had making money. It was just really fun. Our first event was in Okeechobe, Florida, and we built this really cool course with rocks and logs and a bridge out of logs and all. It was just cool as hell. But it's Mud Fest in Okeechobe, Florida. And we got to breathalyze these people to ride. I mean, once you're in this, whatever, I don't know how big the property was. It was a pretty big property. But once you're inside that place, there's no rules. I mean, everybody's just drunk. No one's wearing helmets. I mean, dudes are going 40 miles per hour, face to face on quads and getting life flited out of there. So we're trying to get these people to get breathalized and put helmets on and ride around this course. I mean, we're talking some pretty squiny-eyed rednecks that were not interested in any of that program. We were supposed to do, I think they wanted us to do like 500 rides a day. We were lucky if we could get like 40 or 50 cranked out because everyone was just loaded.

[00:39:24.540] - Phil Licciardi

That was the flop as far as that. I mean, even our security guard. So We'd leave in the evening after we can't do anything anymore. Then we have a security guard come in, and he's just got to stay in the 10 area and watch all the machines, make sure no one's messing around on the course at night. Then we come back the next morning, and the grass grew a foot overnight, and this dude just passed out under one of the tables on the grass. Apparently, got all drunk with some of the people there. I would love to go to an event like that, not on the clock, because everyone was having such a damn good time, except for all the people that were dying. But other than that, it looked like a riot. The truck, those pontoon boats on seven-foot tall tractor tires, whatever you want to call those things, party barges. Swamp buggies and shit. Yeah. Yeah, man. That just looked like a riot. I got to ride on one of those for a minute. There's no seatbelts. I asked the guy about the seatbelts, and he just basically looked at me and called me a pussy.

[00:40:23.590] - Phil Licciardi

I'm like, Okay, so I'll just hold my beer and hold on to this rail, and there we go. It was pretty funny. We did that one. We did an Indiana one. We did a Tyler, Texas one. Then Glamis was still, to this day, the best thing I ever got paid to do in my life, I think, because we didn't have to build a course or anything. We just had to do ride and drives. And since I was the fastest one on motorized vehicles of the people working on that stuff, they put me on one of those DS4 '50s, that was the new motocross squad that came out. They were all hand-built, and they weren't in production yet. They were all pre-production units, and we had three of them, I think. So one of us always had to be on one to be able to catch if someone decided they were going to run. They valued those at $250,000 each because they were handbuilt. So they're like, Don't lose them. Okay. I did end up having to chase somebody back to their camp. He took off like he was going to just roll out, and I was right behind him the whole time.

[00:41:28.100] - Phil Licciardi

He never looked behind him. I followed right back into his camp. I'm like, What's up, dude? He's like, Oh, I was just going to put gas in it. I'm like, Are you fucking high? I don't know if we're allowed to swear on this podcast.

[00:41:39.540] - Big Rich Klein

You can. Yeah.

[00:41:40.480] - Phil Licciardi

I just called him out, and then we had radios and all that. Then I brought some other people in there. They didn't want to press any charges, but we had to get the machine back that way. That was pretty funny. But 10 days over Thanksgiving at Glamis, just chasing people around on quads and riding my dirt whenever I wasn't working, it was an absolute riot. It was good times.

[00:42:04.700] - Big Rich Klein

Glamis is a pretty cool place, especially if you go there when it's not overcrowded.

[00:42:09.820] - Phil Licciardi

That would be nice. I've only been there over Thanksgiving twice.

[00:42:12.770] - Big Rich Klein

We typically do a day or two of the rebel rally down there. Oh, cool. I get a chance to drive the sand dunes, setting up and then tearing down, and then also Just patrolling, you might say, making sure all the girls get back, all the ladies get back to camp. I love Glamis. I don't think I would like it when it's really crowded.

[00:42:44.800] - Phil Licciardi

I think you're right.

[00:42:45.940] - Big Rich Klein

We're there typically the week or two before Razor Fest, and it's already starting to get crowded by the time we're out of there. And it's just you're on the sand highway with It's like driving through Sacramento construction.

[00:43:04.130] - Phil Licciardi

Right. Yeah, that's how it was. Back then, I didn't care. I was there for the crowds. I was there. I was hucking gaps on my dirt bike when I wasn't working. I love a good crowd for that stuff. But nowadays, No, I won't do... The traffic I have in my little town now is too much for me anymore. I'll just stay home.

[00:43:23.530] - Big Rich Klein

You're getting old.

[00:43:26.400] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah, you hear that, man.

[00:43:27.900] - Big Rich Klein

Stay off my lawn.

[00:43:29.520] - Phil Licciardi

Right. Right? That's where we're at now.

[00:43:32.950] - Big Rich Klein

Shelle calls me the Wake Police. We go down to Corpus Christi area, to Port Aranzas, to our boat, and I'll spend half the day custing and swarring people, leaving too big awake. Through the marina.

[00:43:47.750] - Phil Licciardi

Yep. I guess it comes with time.

[00:43:50.860] - Big Rich Klein

I need a big sign.

[00:43:52.090] - Phil Licciardi

That's awesome.

[00:43:54.540] - Big Rich Klein

And it's always these little boats. The big 80-foot plus fishing boats come in, and they're moving, but they don't leave awake. It's the small little bay boats with six oversize guys on it with their stereo blasting, and they leave awake. And it's like, you got... I mean, my boat's not this way, but you got boats in there that are a million dollars plus and getting bashed around in the marina. It's like dumb asses.

[00:44:28.810] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah, seriously. People are crazy.

[00:44:32.290] - Big Rich Klein

Anyway, you get moved up to... Let's see, timeline-wise, you're still in the Sacramento area?

[00:44:43.200] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah, Fulsome.

[00:44:44.520] - Big Rich Klein

Fulsome. Then you finally decide you've had enough of that?

[00:44:50.160] - Phil Licciardi

Kind of. It's that to where... I was at Fullsum, my buddy Brandon's, and then Sarah and I got real serious. I think it was only six months, and I moved in with her in her parents' old house in Sacramento that she was renting. That was pretty cool. Then we tried to buy a house a bunch of times and just kept not working out. Then she tried some other different avenue and found a house, and we moved in, and we were closed in 20 days or something like that. That was in Sifters Heights. We were there for, I don't know, five years before we moved up to Garnerville. Been here ever since. We've been here damn near 11 years now.

[00:45:31.570] - Big Rich Klein

Right. What was the reason? Was it you just got tired of the commies, or was it her chasing work? What caused?

[00:45:40.850] - Phil Licciardi

No, I'd say it was a two-part thing. I never really enjoyed California politics, as we know. I ended up breaking my neck back in 2013, Halloween, Sand Mountain.

[00:45:57.120] - Big Rich Klein

That's right.

[00:45:58.450] - Phil Licciardi

When that happened and I knew I wasn't going to be riding track anymore, I was like, Well, I don't really need to live in Sacks. It was nice being in that area because I had 10 tracks nearby within an hour and a half, and I could ride twice a week, and it was good exercise and good for my mind and all that. But when I wasn't going to ride track anymore, I'm like, well, why do we even need to stay here? So we started looking. I'd come up here. I was pretty much ready to move here anyways, but I wasn't ready to give up the tracks yet. I'd come up in 2012 to machine a bunch of AR lowers. When we'd set something in the CNC machine, we'd go out and ride side by sides behind my buddy Chris's house, which he owned Billet rifle Systems, if anyone remembers that. He was the original Billet 80 guy out there. Then he also did the first Ghost Gun. It was pretty cool. Back, that was what 2012. I just fell in love with the area. It was absolutely beautiful. I hated that. It was mid-March, and I was freezing out here.

[00:47:07.270] - Phil Licciardi

I was like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to deal with that. But you're around it for long enough. It's not as big of a deal. Yeah, after the neck broke, we were about done with our house in Citrus Heights anyway. So we're like, Well, let's throw the last few bucks at it, put the last little bit of effort in, and get it listed. So we did, and damn near traded that house over there for this house, which I mean, I don't know if you've probably seen pictures of the house we're in now, but versus what we had in Citrus Heights, there's no reason why it should have been the same price.

[00:47:41.650] - Big Rich Klein

Right. So location, location, location.

[00:47:44.900] - Phil Licciardi

You got it. And then if we sold this right now, I mean, we couldn't retire by any means. But that would be the first good real estate move I've ever made in life. So it was a good one. We probably will finish this one up this year and maybe move a little further out, just ride the wave out of the state. If it keeps pushing us east if we can keep capitalizing on that and pocketing some cash Great. We'll just do that program, retire that way.

[00:48:19.250] - Big Rich Klein

It's like a reverse of the pioneers. You think about it, they all came West to make money, and now we're all trying to get out of that.

[00:48:30.510] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah. Well, you've seen Wagons East, right? Same theory. Right.

[00:48:37.450] - Big Rich Klein

You got into doing shocks besides just fab work, and various other things, like billet rifle, helping with that stuff. I didn't remember that part.

[00:48:52.410] - Phil Licciardi

Oh, I wasn't doing that for a living. I was just doing that because I hate the government.

[00:48:59.480] - Big Rich Klein

And then You get to Garnerville, and you're still doing fab work, right?

[00:49:10.420] - Phil Licciardi

Oh, yeah. I was going hard at it. I guess we could just back it up a little bit. I built my first ultra four car for my buddy Doug, and everyone remembers the Doug's axles situation.

[00:49:21.810] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, that's right.

[00:49:23.400] - Phil Licciardi

Doug's axles. Yeah. So Doug, absolute epic human. He asked me to build the first car. We'd gone to King of the Hammers 2011. It was his first time going and my first time going just to watch the show. I helped weld on an axel all night for another buddy, Jeremy Hengel from the club. He had broke a front axel housing, so I was just drunk as hell, stick welding this axel back together all night for him, get him across that start line. And while I did have fun doing that, I watched everyone just going broke, trying to make this dream happen. I mean, they're fighting with each other, not necessarily that group, but just other friends in general were just having a hell of a time trying to make this little dream happen. I left that place saying, There is no way in hell I'm ever getting involved in this situation. I'll go play. I'm not going to be a part of it. And about two months later, Doug called me. He's like, Hey, so want to build a ultra four car? I'm like, For you? Yes. So we did that. I don't know how it happened, but two and a half months from tube on the rack to a running, driving ultra four car.

[00:50:40.190] - Phil Licciardi

It was ugly as hell. I built a rule book. I did not interpret the rules the way you could. I just built That's the one thing that would pass tech no matter what. It was a big ugly son of a bitch, and it worked okay. Had a terrible time trying to get it shock tuned. That didn't work very good. But that's where all that started. So I did that rendition of the car, it was on Fox. Fox promised us the world to get it tuned. They didn't do anything. We never got the car working quite right. I'd try to do stuff to the shocks, but then I have to load it up and take it to Prairie City and then realize I suck and then load it up, take it back to the shop, work on it. It was just not an ideal situation to learn how to shock tune. But what became an ideal situation, as soon as I moved up to Garnerville, I could test right out of the house. I started pushing. I'd spent two years basically doing it for free right when I got here. I worked seven days a week, no matter what anyways.

[00:51:35.290] - Phil Licciardi

But I would just spend my weekends doing chalk tuning for free until I felt like I was doing good enough to make a little money, and then fast forward to now.

[00:51:45.690] - Big Rich Klein

During all this, you came up with your long shock?

[00:51:52.010] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah. The term for that is coil path. I did not know that term when I thought I was the The only person on the planet to ever come up with something so stupid. Turns out there's a long history of coil passes done differently, but same theory. It's a bypass shock that holds coil springs. Chris Hicks, Atterac Racing, if you ever heard of that, he had a terrible situation with... I can't think of the builder, but he built Tacoma-looking buggies out of Colorado. I can't think of that guy's name, but he did that dude Chris pretty dirty. And then also that guy's shop burned down while Chris's car was in there not getting finished. All these king shocks killer King Shox package, all of them, brand new race series, everything sitting in boxes on the floor, and the shop burns down. So the shots got nuked. Well, Chris was like, Can you do anything with these? I'm like, Shit, I don't know anything Shox barely yet, but I'll take them. So he just gives them to me, and they look like hell. Like all the plastic and shit's all melted on them, and they're just disgusting.

[00:53:11.450] - Phil Licciardi

All the blue is green, and they've been hot. Well, I ended up breaking them down and I'm like, Oh, man, there's really nothing wrong with these things. Like the fluid color is still good. It melted all the seals, whatever else. But the functioning parts of the shocks, they were in great shape. I went through them, got a game plan together, and I was like, Oh, man, I think I could finally... This is the avenue to make my dream a reality because they cost me nothing, and they're just sitting here. Then Vance to Mars, 3D Concrete, used to be part of the Wild West Motorsports track and everything up in Reno. He had a Trent fab car, and he kept destroying the two five IBPs. They were new shocks at the time, and they'd not enough loctite on the needles. They'd drop needles. They'd just destroy themselves. So he's like, Well, do you want to do those shocks on my car? I'm like, Yes, I do. So he just dropped it off and let me do my thing and slapped those on the back of that car. That was 2016. And posted everything on the internet, and the internet told me I was a fucking idiot, and I was wrong, and everything's going to break and die all the time.

[00:54:30.820] - Phil Licciardi

And then somebody else who was smarter, though, was like, You didn't invent that. I was like, Fuck. Jesus Christ, people. And then someone did link me to what a coil pass is. So I'm like, Okay, you're right. I didn't invent it. I had no idea. I got ahead of myself saying that I may be invented it. But everyone's showing me these coil passes, and no one had done a big one yet, though. This was a 3016. It was the first ones I did. Everybody else was doing 2/5/12. Themselves. Then there was some really, really old stuff on old sand buggies and whatnot that were still small or short travel, whatever. I still probably built the longest ones, longest functioning ones. And those two that are on the back of that car, they had never had a problem in all those years. Vance won a bunch of races and did really good on them, and then he sold it to another guy, and this other guy overjumped something huge at Prairie City and bent both rear shafts a couple of years ago, I guess. I fixed those for him, and he's just been running it since.

[00:55:37.890] - Phil Licciardi

But I won't build. I won't build 3 O's anymore. I won't build anything with a one-inch shaft anymore. If anyone needs them now, they're all going to be inch and a quarter shaft. Big boy shocks, three, five to four and a half. Nothing little anymore. It's too dicey.

[00:55:53.880] - Big Rich Klein

On those coil passes?

[00:55:55.730] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah. Chuck Croslin proved that Well, he can destroy anything, but he was snapping those things off like twigs with a one-inch shaft. So we bumped his up to inch and a quarters, and he hasn't had a problem since.

[00:56:11.200] - Big Rich Klein

So he's your destructive testing guy?

[00:56:15.310] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah, he's everybody's destructive testing guy. I mean, if there is a flaw, he will find it. And most everybody's appreciative of it because now we know. So don't do this that way. If If we can't break it, then we're probably looking pretty good.

[00:56:34.060] - Big Rich Klein

So you're still up in Garnerville. You got a pretty nice place up there. You got your shop. You're doing shock tuning. Did you just build another ultra four car, your own?

[00:56:51.530] - Phil Licciardi

No. The Doug's Axle's car was... What did I pick that thing up in 2021 or 2022, Doug got tired of waiting for wiring and he wanted to start a fire response service. So he's like, well, just get me what you can out of the car and we'll square up. So I had a few bucks at the time. So I bought him out of the car by another buddy. Another buddy had bought the mast. It had a mast, 466, 150-horses Trophy truck engine, dry sump, the whole show, and a $15,000 maximum turbo 400, fully built. So my buddy AJ bought both those for some pretty big money, which was the only reason I was able to buy out the car. I ended up buying out the car and then putting some way cheaper parts back in it. I think the motor was a 430 something LS3-based motor, and I had a turbo 400 from my other party car. It was a maximum built read case. I put that in there and got that car dialed in and was having an absolute blast with it. It hadn't sold yet, so I was supposed to race it in the 2023 King of the Hammers.

[00:58:19.940] - Phil Licciardi

Well, it blew up on me down there. I had a bad ground cable for the Holly system, and I would have never thought. You'd be like, clipping along, and then the tone of the motor would change a little bit. That's weird. Yeah, it turns out the Holly was losing power. So think about an 11: 1 pump gas motor that's pretty well strung out to 700-ish horsepower. If you change timing on that when the voltage changes, well, after a while, it put the rod through the side of the motor. So, yeah, did that, car caught on fire. I'm like, Well, I'm not racing anything. I'm never pulling up to the start line with anything. This is over. Brought the car home, had Grom build me a 408 for it. That ended up being an awesome motor. Got the car all put back together, all cleaned up. And my buddy, Kent Fultz bought it. And in 2024, he had the Pole qualifying position, if anyone remembers, in the We the People car. So he killed it in that. Then he had another good qualifier this year. But he's It was a good run of bad luck with the car.

[00:59:33.070] - Big Rich Klein

That's K-O-H, man. I tell you. That race is brutal.

[00:59:38.730] - Phil Licciardi

Oh, yeah. So we were hoping this was his year for redemption, and he ended up breaking a Spider-Trac's knuckle, assuming maybe they missed it in prep because it was the same corner that they lost all the wheel studs on a front left at the Baja 1000. They had a pit crew. It wasn't them, but there was just a random pit crew out there that changed the tire for the guys that were in the car at the time, and they didn't torque the lug nuts, and they all left the chat. So I'm assuming it probably got hurt when they dropped that front corner in the dirt down there, but you can only speculate. So now he's going to have Chris Wyant build him a really badass front housing, and hopefully that's about it. They got their prep program dialed. The car hasn't missed a beat since they got their prep figured out. But a couple of mechanicals here and there will take you right out.

[01:00:32.790] - Big Rich Klein

See, so many cars that have hope are qualified cars, guys with a good team, good drivers, great car and some $25 part or less takes them out. Totally. It seems like year after year after year, something like that happens to them. I don't know where they're buying those $25 parts, but It's a lot of it.

[01:01:01.370] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah, I couldn't tell you. What did I have? One of my cars crossed the line this year, and it was a hell of redemption. So Matt Bradley had a bad time last year. The car was all dialed. The biggest shock package in 4,800 class, he's got 3. 5 King IBPs on the front, which are unicorns. You got a special order of those. They don't make a spring that fits for that application either. It's It's a nightmare to get those things on there, but they're on there. They're monsters. They do not get hot. Then he's got 407 tube coil passes in the back that I built, and that car is an absolute monster everywhere. Last year, he had a, I guess it was the crank position sensor go bad, and they didn't know it. I mean, he, that guy, poor guy, he spent all his time, all kinds of money, trying to get this thing sorted out, and they didn't know it was the crank position sensor. They were changing every other sensor. They changed the crank position sensor, but it was the wrong one. They did... He ended up sending the motor out to get rebuilt, and there was nothing wrong with the motor.

[01:02:16.380] - Phil Licciardi

And it turns out there's four different crank position sensors for that motor, and it's almost like a crapshoot if you're going to get the right one. So as soon as he got the correct one in there, dropped it in, fired off, didn't miss a beat since, and he crossed the finish line this year. So good for him. Excellent. Yeah.

[01:02:39.150] - Big Rich Klein

What's in the future for you guys?

[01:02:42.710] - Phil Licciardi

Right now, I'm Just real big in the shock service sales and tuning. There's some different collaborations with some people in the works, some really good Some really good manufacturers have been reaching out for help on different stuff, and that's been really cool. And then just trying to help as many teams as I can. I do the tuning for Team GFI, Kawasaki, the side-by-side stuff, because we got Zack Kitzmann, who's an absolute monster behind the wheel. And then, of course, Stone Cold Steve Austin's on that team. That's my buddy. That's really cool knowing that guy. And he's just a guy. You'd think he's just a crazy celebrity, but that's not how he is at all. He's just freaking awesome.

[01:03:37.930] - Big Rich Klein

So you're hanging out at Vora races?

[01:03:40.460] - Phil Licciardi

No, I haven't been. I might go to this one next weekend. I'm going to be tuning snowing. I mean, well, it's snowing again, so we'll see what happens with the weather leading up to it. But I'm supposed to tune every day this coming week leading up to that race. So we'll see what happens. I mean, if I don't get a lot of tuning done, maybe Friday, Friday, I just hook up and roll out there and just be out there to support because it's not going to be as muddy out there as it is here. Right. So might roll over there and hang out for the weekend and try to help out as much as I can. But we'll see what happens. Cool. I haven't been to any races except King of Hammers, pretty much since the COVID nonsense. I don't know why, it's just how it's been.

[01:04:23.320] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, because you did a couple of tours, didn't you? Where you went all over the country doing shock tuning?

[01:04:30.870] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah. I'm not nearly as needed in the south anymore because we've got Chris Wyant, Ditty's Big Block Race Shop. He's down there servicing all those folks and doing a fantastic job of it. So don't really need me there. Then Andrew Sheave, out in Pennsylvania, is taking care of everything all the way to the Eastern Seaboard there. There's other shock tuners popping up around the country. I probably It should be able to name everybody's names, but I don't. I'm not super familiar. There's a lot of people doing it now, which is good because there's a lot of people that need it done. I've got more work than I can do as it is, so I'm not going to hate on anybody.

[01:05:15.880] - Big Rich Klein

Right. Are there companies, and you don't need to listen, but are there companies that you don't want to work on their shocks?

[01:05:24.850] - Phil Licciardi

Yeah, there's plenty. Obviously, FLA is a little tough. I won't work on those, not because they're FLA's, per se. I mean, there's a lot of heartbreak that comes with that. You might someone will be like, I need this chalk fix. I'll open it up and it will have just made metal. It's just destroyed inside. Right. And so I'm like, well, the heartbreak factor was too high. So I just stopped working on those altogether. If somebody wants to, great. But it's just spending Take your money on a quality shock. If you can't afford it right then, don't buy anything yet. Just wait. I know patience is tough, but just wait till you can buy a quality shock brand. You can rebuild any of the major brands a million times. And you can start with a used one that's just not bent and smashed up, and then just rebuild it when you have the money. And then you're still in a better position than buying a cheap shock. And then I've got my... Everyone probably remembers my, I don't know about everybody, but the whole Daniel Sash thing. He owns carbon shocks now. But back then, he was all like a super FAA guy, and he copied my long shock design after stealing all, convincing me to give him all these different specs for a chassis and all this, because he was going to buy a chassis.

[01:06:45.810] - Phil Licciardi

He was going to buy long shocks for me. I was going to set them all up. And then he ended up getting a Jimmy's chassis, and making his own long shocks out of F-O-A's. And I guess he sent pictures of the car from far away to different manufacturers for sponsorship stuff. And a lot of them were willing to give him stuff. They're like, Oh, you supported Phil and got long shots from him, and he He was like, Yeah, totally, blah, blah, blah. Then he reached out to me one day. He's like, Hey, so I wanted you to hear from me before you hear from anyone else. But I decided to bring the long chalk design in-house and do it myself. Yada, yada, yada. I'm You can't bring something in-house you didn't design. You just, okay, cool. You sold my design and did your thing, and then we'll let the Internet decide. And the Internet took him for a ride. But now he's got the carbon chalk thing. And I guess, suppose But obviously, some of them are good. I opened some over the week at Hammers, and they were absolutely just nuked. So I'm not going to work on those either.

[01:07:55.010] - Big Rich Klein

Right. Okay. I guess that's about it. Is there anything that that we've missed?

[01:08:02.560] - Phil Licciardi

I can't think of anything. Just in my little shock Dungeon doing stuff these days. It's about it. If anybody needs any suspension components or side-by-side stuff or whatever, please reach out. I'd love my sales to go back to where they were in 2019, 2020. Let's do that.

[01:08:21.840] - Big Rich Klein

And that's Liberty Mountain FAB?

[01:08:24.120] - Phil Licciardi

Yep. There's no website, so catch me on Instagram or Facebook. Don't use the business Facebook for Liberty Mountain. Just find my personal one and message that, or just Instagram. Otherwise, I probably won't get it, and you'll never hear from me. I'm not giving my phone number out.

[01:08:42.140] - Big Rich Klein

Right. No, that makes sense. I get it. Okay, so if anybody wants to get hold of you, Instagram and Facebook. Personal page, Phil LaCarty.

[01:08:52.230] - Phil Licciardi

Appreciate it. All right. Thank you.

[01:08:54.790] - Big Rich Klein

All right, Phil. Thank you so much for spending the morning discussing your life and what you got going. It was awesome. Thank you.

[01:09:06.030] - Phil Licciardi

Of course. I appreciate it. Hopefully, my boring life was interesting enough for someone to listen to. Thanks for reaching out and getting us going.

[01:09:14.110] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, far from boring. Far from boring. All right. You take care and have a great day.

[01:09:19.710] - Phil Licciardi

All right, sir. We'll talk to you later.

[01:09:20.860] - Big Rich Klein

All right. Take care.

[01:09:21.840] - Phil Licciardi

Bye-bye.

[01:09:24.310] - Big Rich Klein

Well, that's another episode of Conversations with Big Rich. I'd like to thank you all for listening. If If you could do us a favor and leave us a review on any podcast service that you happen to be listening on, or send us an email or a text message or a Facebook message, and let me know any ideas that you have or if there's anybody that you have that you would think would be a great guest, please forward the contact information to me so that we can try to get them on. And always remember, live life to the fullest. Enjoying life is a must. Follow your dreams and live life with all the gusto can. Thank you.